Presidential historian Michael Beschloss' second volume on the LBJ tapes is called Reaching for Glory: The Secret Lyndon Johnson Tapes, 1964-1965. Beschloss talks about the tapes and we hear excerpts — including recordings of conversations about Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. We also hear Johnson speaking with Jackie Kennedy. Beschloss has written five previous books on American presidents and is a regular contributor to The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at the New Yorker. His new book is an investigation into the bush gore presidential recount. Its called, Too Close to Call : The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election (Random House). He also has a piece in the latest New Yorker, about the new anti-terrorism legislation. His last book, A Vast Conspiracy, was about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. His book The Run of His Life was about the OJ Simpson Trial. Toobin is also a legal analyst for ABC news.
Writer Ben Cheever's new book is called Selling Ben Cheever: Back to Square One in a Service Economy (Bloomsbury). In 1995, Cheever lost his publisher and was not able to sell his third novel. To continue working, he decided to take jobs at chain bookstores, car dealerships, and sandwich shops. His book is about his 5 years working in the 'service economy.' Cheever's novels include The Plagiarist, The Partisan, and Famous After Death. He has been a newspaper reporter and an editor at Reader's Digest.
Musician, producer, arranger, composer Quincy Jones has a new autobiography, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, (Doubleday) and a 4-CD boxset collecting his work, Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones (Rhino). In his fifty year career hes worked with just about anyone who is anybody in the music business. As a teenager he played backup for Billie Holiday, along with his 16 year old friend, Ray Charles. At 18 he began playing the trumpet in Lionel Hamptons band beside Clifford Brown.
Emmy-award winning sportscaster Bob Costas. Since 1980 hes been afilliated with the NBC network covering Major League Baseball, the NFL, and the NBA. He was the prime-time host for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games, the 1996 Summer Olympics, and the 2000 Sydney Games. Hes won numerous Emmys including one for his now defunct late-night TV interview program Later with Bob Costas. He is currently anchor of MSNBCs InterNight. Costas is also the author of Fair Ball: A Fans Case for Baseball.
An expert on chemical/biological weapons proliferation and arms control, Dr. Jonathan Tucker. He is Director of the Chemical & Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Tucker is also author of the new book, Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox
William Wechsler was Special Adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001. He also served as Director for Transnational Threats on the U.S. National Security Council and as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Clinton. Hel discuss what needs to be done to track the terrorist money trail.
He becomes the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2003. Formerly music director for the Houston Symphony, Eschenbach is currently Conductor Laureate for that symphony. He is the music director of the Orchestre de Paris and Germanys Hamburg NDR Symphony Orchestra. He has also been the music director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home to the Chicago Symphony since 1994. He was named director for the Philadelphia Orchestra in January of this year.
Former New York Times Balkans Bureau Chief and Middle East Bureau Chief, Hedges is currently a correspondent for that paper. In the past few weeks, hes been covering terrorist cells in France and Belgium. He recently published a piece in Harpers Magazine called "A Gaza Diary." He lives in New York.
Garth Fagan is the Tony Award winning choreographer of Broadway The Lion King. He is the founder and artistic director of the critically acclaimed group Garth Fagan Dance. Fagan is a Distinguished University Professor of the State University of New York. He won many awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim.
Author Hanif Kureishi's new novel is Gabriel Gift, (Scribner) about a 15-year-old boy and his struggles with his artistic soul and restless parents. Simultaneously two of Kureishi works are coming out in a combined paperback edition: Intimacy: A Novel and Midnight All Day: Stories. (Scribner). Intimacy has been adapted to film. Several of Kureishi earlier novels, My Beautiful Laundrette, and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, were also made into films.
In honor of the 40th anniversary of the film West Side Story, we speak with cast members. The film is a screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical about New York City gangs circa 1960. It won ten Oscars. First, George Chakiris, who played Bernardo in the movie. He won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for the role. Chakiris was born in 1935 and made his acting debut at the age of 12. Hes been in many films, TV shows and plays. He got the West Side Story film role after playing the role of Biff in the London theater production of West Side Story.
Actress Marni Nixon. Moreno won an Oscar for her role as Anita in West Side Story. She been in dozens of films and TV shows. Many baby boomers will remember her from the kidsPBS series The Electric Company. She played a starlet in Singinin the Rain. Marni Nixon is the singing voice of Maria (played by Natalie Wood) in West Side Story. She also did voiceovers for Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. More recently, she did voiceover work for the animated film Mulan.
Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on "The Star Spangled Banner" and possible alternative anthems that would be less militaristic and easier for everyone to sing.
Since 1994, Dr. Peter Piot been the director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the executive director of U.N. AIDS, the U.N. agency coordinating the fight against the disease. He also co-discovered the Ebola virus. He's considered the U.N.'s top AIDS official. He says Asian countries need to take AIDS prevention and treatment more seriously, as they are only at the beginning of the epidemic. Countries most affected are Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia. Piot says the HIV/AIDS epidemic has hit India very hard.
